


Poison Oak

by burymeinziam



Series: Poison Oak [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-05
Updated: 2013-07-05
Packaged: 2017-12-17 18:04:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/870399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burymeinziam/pseuds/burymeinziam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is a sunrise, a sunset, and everything in between</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poison Oak

**i.**

They met on the edge of First and Last when the rain was pouring and making the world feel blurry around the edges all the while smudging the lines between Right and Wrong. He was messy black hair that hung flat and damp across his forehead and he was reaching out with shaky fingers as his lips curved around the words.

“Got a smoke?”

Liam said he didn’t have one (“they’re bad for you anyways”) and Zayn sort of shrugged his shoulders in this half hearted way that made it seem like he didn’t care, but Liam could somehow tell that he was a little disappointed, before saying that he wasn’t scared to die.

He’s looking up at the hazy night sky dotted with stars and raindrops that splatter across his cheeks when Zayn says something about how he sometimes feels like a single celled dot within the planes of the universe and did Liam ever feel that way at night?

“You know, when the sun falls behind the clouds and washes everything over into black leaving the moon to illuminate the quiet things that no one ever takes the time to notice?”

And Liam cocks his head to the side, his lips quirking up before he says “Like us?”

Zayn nods, his eyes breaking from the sky to find Liam’s. “Yeah.”

And then they fall together with shaking breaths, heavy sighs, eager mouths, and far too much desperation.

**ii.**

His apartment is messy.

There are books strewn everywhere and half-filled coffee cups collecting dust in cloudy windowpanes. He says the electricity has been shut off as he carelessly throws himself onto an old armchair with one arm ripped open and stuffing spilling out onto the false wooden tile.

A bony finger silently missing a cigarette sticks itself up into the air, crafting lazy circles across the stuffy air of the living room beckoning Liam to sit anywhere he likes.

Liam finds himself walking towards Zayn, his heart lodging itself in his throat, pulse pounding into his ears. He thinks he sees a mouse.

Zayn says it isn’t much, but Liam thinks he could come to call it home.

**iii.**

“The worlds got me dizzy again,” Zayn says as he exhales strands of smoke into crisp, dry night air. He works two jobs just to pay the rent and he feeds Liam peanut butter and expired jelly sandwiches for dinner and he also doesn’t seem to mind whenever Liam forgets and leaves his toothpaste on the sparse bathroom counter.

They sit and watch the static on the old television set that sits on the floor of Zayn’s living room in front of the busted armchair, taking turns imagining far off worlds within the dancing black and gray designs. Zayn tells Liam that he used to fall down a lot, that most people don’t even bother to ask his name.

“But somehow I don’t think you’ll ever do that to me,” he says. “I keep my balance whenever you’re around.”

Liam swallows hard and blinks really fast and hopes to God that Zayn is right.

**iv.**

They’re sitting in the park and the sun is shining and birds are singing and Liam is trying not to blink his eyes to much from the burn of the radiant light. Zayn has got his sunglasses on, and there’s the echo of an old coffee stain on his faded gray T-shirt.

Liam’s hands are itching, fingers twitching, heart leaping as he contemplates reaching out to take Zayn’s hand up in his fingers. He hopes his hands aren’t too rough, too soft or too small or too big or just wrong because if they were, Liam isn’t sure of what he would do. He watches from the corner of his eye, vision blurring slightly from the harsh light of the sun and tries not to notice the way parents skirt around them, some fleck of fear echoing within their eyes. Fear of the unknown, maybe; something they don’t understand.

But sitting here with Zayn, the sun fading to black to blacker than black, understanding seems to lose all of its importance. Zayn turns to him, lip caught in between his teeth.

“Do you remember how that felt? Just being a kid when the world was wrapped in gold?”

Liam turns from him and looks down, not knowing if he could ever tell him that, yes, yes he does. Whenever he’s with Zayn he knows the feeling entirely.

**v.**

He’s scratching at his arms because these little bugs have taken over the small apartment space and even though it’s getting hot out he still looks beautiful. His hair covers his head in messy chunks dampened with sweat and glistening in the molten sunlight pooling from the cracked and cloudy windowpane.

A song stars up somewhere inside Liam’s heart as his eyes try to commit Zayn to memory, to keep him locked away forever, tucked away in the farthest corner of his mind where nothing can ever taint the image. He wants to help but he doesn’t know how and Zayn just smiles and tells him not to worry; he’ll be fine.

“We’ll be fine.”

Suddenly it feels as though a flock of birds has taken up underneath Liam’s ribcage and he’s floating away with Zayn’s words and he’s with Zayn and Zayn is with him. Something catches in his throat and Liam wonders what Zayn would say if he were to tell him that he can taste infinity on his lips whenever he breathes his name.

**vi.**

“I don’t have parents,” Zayn says curling his lips into a circle and blowing smoke out through the cracked window. His fingers are restless, tapping on his scabbed kneecaps and trailing up Liam’s arms.

Liam’s skin tingles whenever Zayn touches and before he knows it Zayn is tracing his heart, making soft delicate strokes and causing his blood to race faster through all the different valves and veins of his heart before flowing out through the rest of his body. Goosebumps rise up on the skin of Liam’s forearms and he hopes that Zayn doesn’t notice how much it means to him.

“That’s silly,” Liam says, already regretting his choice of words because nothing this beautiful boy could say is silly. His words are everything. “Everyone comes from someone.”

Zayn’s eyes flick over towards Liam’s and something pools within them. Some unknown emotion that Liam wishes he could pull away from Zayn’s heart, something between them, clouding up this perfect world that Liam was imagining existed solely for himself and Zayn.

“Not me.”

**vii.**

Liam looks at him, the boy with no parents and unruly dark hair with hollowed out cheeks and shaking fingers paired with the most beautiful golden brown eyes and he wonders. HE wonders what he would ever do without him because lately a far off look had taken over Zayn’s eyes and Liam isn’t sure of what that means.

Zayn’s slouching shoulder blades slide away as Liam’s desperate fingertips reach out to touch his skin, his eyes tilted downward and closed up tight. Liam wonders what he’s done wrong and what he can do to make it better, what he can do to make Zayn love him all over again.

And then one morning when the sun has just risen up, over a bowl of soggy cheerios drenched in what Liam is sure to be expired milk, he opens up his mouth and asks Zayn what, why, who, how?

And those golden brown eyes catch his for a moment before wavering, filling up with liquid, echoing all the words that Zayn will probably never say.

“Nothing,” his voice cracks. “Just… you don’t want to know about me. I’m no good for you; I’m just not.”

**viii.**

They’re sitting at the park again, Zayn’s scabbed knees showing through the worn out cutoff jeans, pale shoulders poking through a thin white shirt. More than anything, Liam wants to reach out and touch him but he’s afraid contact with his skin might shatter each ounce of carefully crafted calm he’s managed to paint over his anxiety. The birds are chirping and children are playing and bees are buzzing but somehow things just don’t seem as bright.

The downward cast to Zayn’s lips is ripping Liam’s world to pieces.

“Remember the last time you brought me here?” Zayn asks. His voice is quiet and it makes Liam’s heart leap in anticipation of something, anything. “When everything seemed wrapped up in these silvery layers…”

Zayn trails off.

Liam swallows.

“Yes,” he tries moments later when Zayn hasn’t continued and Liam wants him to say more. He tries to hate the way his voice cracks but he can’t knowing that emotion is everything and nothing all at once.

“What do you remember about it?” Zayn asks.

Liam closes his eyes, a smile creeping onto his lips as he remembers the way Zayn’s hair had burned with the sunlight and how it felt to hold his hand and somehow feeling infinity in the way Zayn pressed soft, open mouthed kisses to the underside of Liam’s forearm.

Liam tells Zayn this and feels a heat prickling at his cheeks.

“I remember it differently,” Zayn says and then there’s a fissure forming and cracking apart Liam’s ribcage.  
  
 **viiii.**

He’s crying almost noiselessly, silver colored dots of pure emotion bursting from his eyes but what scares Liam the most is how he’s folding into himself like everything is just too much and Zayn is just so _quiet._ There’s something gripping at Liam’s throat but he can’t quite make it out, not sure of what to do or what to say or how to act. His chest is spreading open, more and more with each tear dripping down Zayn’s chin and more than anything Liam wants to extract his still beating, blood covered heart with his shaky, sweat dampened fingers and show Zayn how much he cares; how much he will always care. No matter what Liam says Zayn just shakes his head and tells Liam that he doesn’t understand.

How can something so perfect turn to dust so quickly?

“The world is just too easy for you,” Zayn tells him, looking down. “It’s never been like that for me and it never will. You have this way of looking at things… looking at _me_ , and I just can’t.”

He just can’t.

**x.**

Thirty-six days feels like a lifetime, an ocean of breaths taken that Liam wishes he could take back.

Thirty six days since he’s seen him, held him, kissed him.

He’s back home now, the same cracked navy blue paint, dirty carpet littered with burn marks, soda stains and the echoes of footprints and dirty clothes. Burning agony blazing across his skin and it reminds him of poison oak; the pain of losing him.

Liam feels like a ghost: hollow, invisible wisps of air overlooked by the people who should love him most. He doesn’t even think they realized he’d been gone. It’s almost as if it had never happened, meeting Zayn and falling in love and sharing what he thought would amount to endless never ending days burning with sunlight and happiness.

Liam still doesn’t know what happened or why.

 _Why?_ That’s the question he is sure will haunt him for a lifetime.

Zayn was crying as he opened the door for him, the door that would eventually close locking away the most memorable part of Liam’s life on the other side.

The last thing Liam remembers is his voice, strangled and somehow still beautifully faint, whispering “I love you” and locking the door.


End file.
